Creative Creationists' Clever Constructions...

[Kaje]

... and a clickity-clack cowabunga conflagration...

was recently making my web-rounds and came across this ... and in turn this. The second one is a summary of a series of videos by a high school teacher that claim to show why the earth is only 6000 years old. The first is more of a detailed summary on one of these videos which discusses stalactite formation and says that it doesn't take anywhere near as long to form a stalactite as science would tell us.

Among them is a photo of stalactities, some 50 inches in length, that have been formed by dripping water under the Lincoln Memorial, built in 1922. These stalactites have grown nearly 2/3 inch per year! So much for the "thousand years per inch" idea.

Hovind also shows a photo of a bat covered by flowstone in a cave before he could rot. Imagine how long this bat would have had to lie here dead, without rotting, for this flowstone to cover him as it has! Obviously, these mineral deposits occur much more rapidly than we are led to believe.

Does anybody know what he's talking about and is there ANY truth to these example? Let alone the claims that carries for the cave stalactites

Then on the second page with the video series summaries we see:

We can apply this same logic to learn the age of the earth. The rotation of the earth is slowing down. That means it used to rotate faster. If the earth were millions of years old, the winds generated by the Coriolis effect would have made it uninhabitable.

So what's the story behind this? Any truth? Refuting theories?

This is the sort of thing that is often quoted by the oh-so-gregarious "fundies" along with such arguments that "we've never observed stars forming, in nebulas the matter is moving AWAY from the nucleus" and that sort of thing (that example was from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/gish-ross-debate.html

So in conclusion, anyone who knows what they're talking about is invited to refute these claims, but please do so with science, not dogma... I'm well aware that Jack Chick is a lowlife scumbag fundamentalist hussy, which is why I would like to see these claims put to rest.

[JonScribe]

I would imagine that the formation of staglatites and staglamites varies depending on such factors as the composition of the rock and minerals involved and flow of water, as well as time. So trying to judge the age of Earth by a staglatite seems pretty inaccurate. Better to stick with carbon dating.

[Smeghead]

I'n not familiar with all of these arguments, but I do remember reading something about the wind one. Can't remember the cite - sorry. Anyway, as usual, the postulates are true, but the conclusion is garbage. It is true that the earth's spin is slowing, and it is true that it used to be faster. However, the difference is so little that it would be barely noticeable. I specifically remember an example of a particular patch of fossilized coral, which forms patterns that allow you to determine day length. I wish I had more details, but these fossils indicate that umpteen million years ago, the day was *gasp* 23 and a half hours long.

Anyway, the point is that the difference would be so slight that winds would not even enter into it.

[Cardinal]

Just a note from someone in almost over his head:

Carbon dating works only for things that used to be alive, to tell when the plant that made them died and stopped adding new radioactive Carbon-14 atoms.

Because of that, and the fact that the half-life is under 6K years, it is NO good for estimating the age of the earth.

[Kaje]

Originally posted by Dave Swaney
Just a note from someone in almost over his head:

Carbon dating works only for things that used to be alive, to tell when the plant that made them died and stopped adding new radioactive Carbon-14 atoms.

Because of that, and the fact that the half-life is under 6K years, it is NO good for estimating the age of the earth.

If I try and respond to this it will be like 2 8 year olds debating partisan politics (I'm in over my head too).. but whatever... I dont' see why the fact that the half-life is 6k years would make it useless. That's not when all radioactivity is gone, only half, and by that there would never be a point where its ALL gone. After 6k years there's still plenty of of the original radioactive isotope left (plenty meaning still 50%) So maybe I just don't see what you're getting at.

In addition: I know that there are plenty of people on these boards who are familiar with these subjects (if not these specific arguments) who are by no means afraid to set things straight... I've seen you in other threads.. so where are you in my moment of need?

[bonzer]

Does anybody know what he's talking about and is there ANY truth to these example? Let alone the claims that carries for the cave stalactites

Since nobody, except the occasional creationist, regards stalactite formation rates as central to the evidence for the antiquity of the Earth, arguing about them is assaulting a straw-man. No doubt stalactites have been used in the past to show that the planet's been around for more than 6000-odd years and some may find stalactites interesting in their own right, but frankly the scientific issues have moved on from that. The Earth was formed around 4.5 billion years ago and the evidence for this has nothing to do with stalactites.

I'n not familiar with all of these arguments, but I do remember reading something about the wind one. Can't remember the cite - sorry. Anyway, as usual, the postulates are true, but the conclusion is garbage. It is true that the earth's spin is slowing, and it is true that it used to be faster.

The Talk Origins site (http://www.talkorigins.org.) was already mentioned in the original post; as you'd expect, it provides details and the citations for this. And much else.

I dont' see why the fact that the half-life is 6k years would make it useless. That's not when all radioactivity is gone, only half, and by that there would never be a point where its ALL gone. After 6k years there's still plenty of of the original radioactive isotope left

There's already a thread on the board (here) discussing how successive halvings rapidly reduce even piles of atoms down to small amounts. Thus while longer than a single half-life, the practical limit on the technique is typically some fairly small multiple of it. Off the top of my head, it's currently only used back to about 50K years, i.e. about 10 half-lives. The radioactivity in the sample will reduce by about a 1000 over this time. At this point, other issues start to become important and so this method breaks down for older dates.

Estimates of the Earth's age use radioisotopes with much longer half-lives. The Talk Origins site would be a good place to start for more details and I'd recommend G. Brent Dalrymple's The Age of the Earth (Stanford University Press, 1991) as a through, well-written account.

[TheeGrumpy]

The stalactite issue is ultimately irrelevant, unless someone is claiming that they are the same age as the Earth. Ditto the "arguments" which show the Mississippi River, Niagara Falls or the Sahara Desert to be surprisingly young: since these features are understood to have formed sometime after the Earth (even Creationists believe this), their age indicates nothing.

As for the rotating Earth, Dave Matson goes on to show that the rate of slowing is not significant enough to cause massive hurricanes, or what have you. It simply does not add up. The same goes for the receding Moon, incidentally.

[Kaje]

thanks for your post grumpy, that was exactly the kind of info i was looking for. As per the rotation thing, the only thing not covered is the Coreolis effect thing, but if the day was only 2 hours "faster" i'll assume that was taken care of. After having read the stalactite one though I still have a couple questions to post in here:

Many people have found that stalactites forming on concrete or mortar outdoors may grow several centimeters each year. Stalactite growth in these environments, however, bears little relation to that in caves, because it does not proceed by the same chemical reaction. Although cement and mortar are made from limestone, the same rock in which the caves form, the carbon dioxide has been driven off by heating. When water is added to these materials, one product is calcium hydroxide, which is about 100 times as soluble in water as calcite is. A calcium hydroxide solution absorbs carbon dioxide rapidly from the atmosphere to reconstitute calcium carbonate, and produce stalactites. This is why stalactites formed by solution from cement and mortar grow much faster than those in caves. To illustrate, in 1925, a concrete bridge was constructed inside Postojna Cave, Yugoslavia, and adjacent to it an artificial tunnel was opened. By 1956, tubular stalactites 45 centimeters long were growing from the bridge, while stalactites of the same age in the tunnel were less than 1 centimeter long.

ok so, cement and mortar are made from the same rock of which the caves are formed, and the key difference between forming the stalactites on buildings and those in caves is the CO2... But then they build a cement bridge in a cave, so that the bridge and the tunnel are presumably exposed to the same air, and hence the same [cavelike] CO2 content, but the stalactites form on the bridge much faster (and actually the same rate proposed on concrete buildings OUTSIDE a cave). The tunnel must be closer to outside air, and therefore would have lower CO2 content, and therefore would produce more calcium hydroxide and hence larger stalactites.

If somebody can find my error here I would be greatful.

[Saltire]

Originally posted by Kaje
ok so, cement and mortar are made from the same rock of which the caves are formed, and the key difference between forming the stalactites on buildings and those in caves is the CO2... But then they build a cement bridge in a cave, so that the bridge and the tunnel are presumably exposed to the same air, and hence the same [cavelike] CO2 content, but the stalactites form on the bridge much faster (and actually the same rate proposed on concrete buildings OUTSIDE a cave). The tunnel must be closer to outside air, and therefore would have lower CO2 content, and therefore would produce more calcium hydroxide and hence larger stalactites.

If somebody can find my error here I would be greatful.

The thing you're leaving out is the solubility of the calcium hydroxide in the concrete as compared to the calcite in the stone. That's the variable, not the air. In places with both concrete and more carbon dioxide, the effect would, I assume, be even greater.